2:12 min., loop
Edition of 4
The video is based on a mediocre painting, Fëmijët (1966; The Children) by Albanian socialist realist painter Spiro Kristo (b. 1936). For the shooting, the outdoor street scene of the painting was staged as a tableau vivant inside the Hotel Dajti (designed by one of the Italian colonial architects during the fascist occupation), in one of its former groundfloor salons. It's a short and mostly silent pictorial meditation or gesture (looped), a melancholic greeting to Brecht's Street Scene. The only piece of text is heard from the off spoken by one of the girls. It's the Albanian translation of “L’image doit sortir du cadre” (The image should stand out from the frame). That advice was given by the old Francisco Pacheco – official censor of Seville's Inquisition & author of Arte de la pintura: su antiquedad y grandeza – to his pupil (and son-in-law) Diego Velázquez. Foucault quoted it in his famous (and erroneous) “Las Meninas” essay, which was to become the first chapter of Les mots et les choses (in 1966).
Peter Friedl was born in Oberneukirchen, Austria, in 1960, and currently lives and works in Berlin. Since the early nineties, he has been building up a heterogeneous body of work (photography, painting, video, drawing, text) with a strong component of social and political critique. Friedl draws attention to the conflicts between contemporary politics and aesthetic narrative. He often turns to genres (tableaux vivant, documents) and subject matter (childhood, social exclusion) that are undervalued in the modern artistic tradition, and uses displacement and overexposure to challenge accepted systems of representation. Friedl pushes the boundaries of genres and codes for purposes that are clearly critical. He is best known for the photographic works he produced in South Africa, Haiti, Brazil and other places that were the scenes of Europe’s colonial past, and for his work based on American philosopher John Rawls’ theory of justice. He has published numerous essays and critical texts on theatre and aesthetics.